Old Gregg,Maybe it got lost in the comments, but Negmaster and Negative Lab Pro both deserve a closer look for inverting color. I have provided both the endorsement and full-sized sample scans you can evaluate.
Maybe it got lost in the comments, but Negmaster and Negative Lab Pro both deserve a closer look for inverting color. I have provided both the endorsement and full-sized sample scans you can evaluate.
I have. Some negatives are inverted pretty well, but not all are. The RAW files are from a Pentax camera (type .PEF).I
Have you (or anyone else) used VueScan to open a camera-copy RAW file of a color negative, and then converted that to a positive in Vuescan?
Perhaps you could ask Vuescan, the company?I
Would anyone care to speculate what would cause VueScan to render a RAF like this?
Fair enough. My point was that all color inversion tools require tweaking, including Silverfast, supposedly the top choice among film scanner owners. Which is a way is a good thing, because a negative is just a starting point for creative interpretation. If your preference is for a reasonable one-click inversion, you can probably ignore my input because I have never seen that work to my liking, neither with scanners nor cameras.
@wiltw I must say your sample definitely looks pretty good for a 100% hands-off inversion. The closest equivalent in camera-scanning world IMO would be NLP, which can operate in fully-automatic mode, here's a sample that I spend zero time on: invert+apply. Kodak ProImage 100.
My problem with DSLR digitizing, and I'm not too proud to admit it, is that the scanned negatives suffer from too much outside light and wrong color balance. I'm still fine-tuning my process, but as I've said elsewhere the Epson produces good results with less effort, and I suffer from a high moment of inertia.
Still not as good as it should be-- which is kind of my point. DSLR digitizing can indeed produce superior results-- but a flatbed will produce very usable results for much less effort.
That "negative to positive" facility in Paintshop Pro is not designed to convert an orange masked film negative to a positive. It is designed an unmasked digital image.Back to OP, I have tried built in capability within Paintshop Pro to convert negative to positive. The result came out inferior
That "negative to positive" facility in Paintshop Pro is not designed to convert an orange masked film negative to a positive. It is designed an unmasked digital image.
You can use Paintshop Pro in a manner similar to Photoshop to remove the effects of the mask - essentially creating a layer based on a sampling of the unexposed rebate and then merging the image and mask layer using a division process. I've only tried it a couple of times but found the process unweildy.
Hmmm...I have a reason to pull out my color printing filter set which I used well before getting a dichoic head enlarger!I do not understand where this method of removing orange mask came from, I suspect it originated from the older days of hybrid workflow. It is much easier (and mathematically equivalent) to simply set the wide balance on a RAW file using the "pipette" on a film rebate. There's one caveat though: some RAW converter + light source combinations will not have the adjustment range to cancel a heavier mask of some films (Fuji 400H Pro). For this, I have installed a CC40C filter into my light source.
If reversal of negatives can be done pretty well and easily by scanners, I wonder why no application software has been deleloped to undo the mask and convert dSLR-imaged negatives in a process as easy as the scanners seem to do it?!
I do not understand where this method of removing orange mask came from, I suspect it originated from the older days of hybrid workflow. It is much easier (and mathematically equivalent) to simply set the wide balance on a RAW file using the "pipette" on a film rebate. There's one caveat though: some RAW converter + light source combinations will not have the adjustment range to cancel a heavier mask of some films (Fuji 400H Pro). For this, I have installed a CC40C filter into my light source.
Old Gregg said:You are confusing me again.
Will just have to try out RawTherapee, and then try out the trial copy of NLP to decide for myself if a reasonable solution exists that rivals scanning on my Canon 8800F with NP Navigator software for time, effort, and quality of result. Equal is not good enough, if you have to pay money for the NLP. and you already own the scanner-based solution.@wiltw Yes, but that's because they also wanted to make additional custom tweaks on top of NLP, but also (for some strange reason) want to keep the original file. It's like you scanning into a TIFF, keeping it, and making and keeping another TIFF with additional edits. That's a really strange corner case.
Sorry, this is incorrect. This interaction (when the mask cancels out dye imperfections) happens when light travels through film during digitization, exactly the same way it happens in an enlarger. After that, it's just a trivial WB correction, a digital equivalent of color filters in an enlarger. Even when inverting manually, it's not rocket science: set the WB, invert, adjust R/G/B layers to a common white point, clip on both ends, then adjust gamma on R+B channels a bit, and here's the end result.
Huss,
7 minutes total for 36 exposures...pretty good turnaround, less than 15 sec per image.
But your shot of Golden Gate Bridge reveals color issues..GG bridge too pink..photo .too cyan overall. not enough orange in the bridge color
I feel awkward. Is this not polite to point out that colors/contrast/grain/saturation on these are way off? I don't even know what went wrong here, could be botched development maybe?
So you maintain there's no difference in sensitivity between the curves for Red, Green and Blue with RA-4 photosensitive paper and a CMOS sensor?
That's news. I guess Silverfast wasted all their effort creating custom curves for each channel for each film type.
As I stated earlier, what someone posted in post 21 made me think NLP is not the solution for me:
"That is exactly how Negative Lab Pro complicates my workflow in Lightroom.I want to bring in files to LR in order to be able to make further adjustments when necessary.
I digitize film with my digital camera, and import the camera's RAW files into Lightroom. If I don't duplicate the NLP-converted file as a TIFF/JPEG, then normal Lightroom tools work backwards, so further editing with Lightroom tools is difficult or impossible. I use Lightroom's local adjustment tools a lot - adjustments which are impossible using the NLP module. So, using NLP really forces me to duplicate the RAW files as a TIFF/JPEG."
@wiltw Yes, but that's because they also wanted to make additional custom tweaks on top of NLP, but also (for some strange reason) want to keep the original file. It's like you scanning into a TIFF, keeping it, and making and keeping another TIFF with additional edits. That's a really strange corner case.
Post 21 is mine. Let me try to clarify:
If you don't mind Exporting the NLP edits to your camera RAW file as a TIFF - and then re-importing the TIFF back into Lightroom - then most of my objections go away. (The NLP software makes the process of exporting and re-importing simpler than it sounds.) Whether you keep the camera RAW file, or trash it, is up to you. If you keep it, then there is a cost in storage. If you trash the RAW file, then you won't have the option re-convert it again with NLP using some other combination of settings.
As mentioned above, the main reason to keep the RAW file is to preserve the option to use NLP to convert it again later. There are many different NLP conversion settings and each combination produces very different results. After you get better at choosing the settings that produce results you like best, you might want to go back to the RAW file for a do-over. Throwing away the RAW file is more like throwing away the negative after you've made a print.
Just throw away the inverted TIFF and keep the original RAW file. I get a bunch of TIFFs in Lightroom all the time, because this dumb thing can't really do much anyway, it's just an NLP launcher.Every time I edit a file in Affinity Photo I end up with yet another temporary TIFF.
@Huss Phew, thanks for not holding it against me, I always enjoy your posts. Speaking of grain, I suspect the difference is in our approach to RAW processing. Here's a full-sized scan of ProImage. The grain looks softer for some reason, and also I downsample my scans to 5000px wide, that could also explain some.
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